"It all hinges on the aggressive acquisition strategy that occurred where large sums, I think in a five-year period alone, around $360-odd million was spent on buying businesses and those businesses were never fully integrated into the business," he said.

"So you don't have the cost savings you'd expect through synergies.

"It's pretty obvious that large amounts were paid for this businesses so they paid top dollar and at the same time, earnings then dropped once these businesses were under the Hastie banner."

Susheela Peres da Costa is the head of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) services at governance research group Regnan.

"What really jumped out at me is that a company going through quite an active acquisition period with a number of challenges surrounding its financing and so on, had a board that, according to this report, really was not asking sufficiently rigorous questions of its management team and of the reporting presented to it," she said.

Questions to answer

The administrator's report recommends Hastie be placed into liquidation, but it has also suggested leading accounting firm Deloitte may have some questions to answer.

Deloitte had been an auditor for Hastie and ticked off on figures given in a prospectus to attract new investors to the company.

"It's not clear what's happened here, but we do see that as a risk factor and that's something that we're quite vigilant about in our assessment of companies," Ms Peres da Costa said.

Deloitte says as far as it can see, it has been thorough in the services it provided.

"Deloitte is of the view that it has complied with relevant Australian auditing standards in conducting the audit of Hastie Group Ltd. We can't comment further on confidential matters of this nature," it said in a statement.

Questions have also been raised about how much responsibility the corporate regulator should take for the damage caused by the collapse of Hastie.

PM's request for an interview was rejected.

In a statement, ASIC said: "In the normal course, ASIC will assess the reports to consider whether to investigate and possibly take enforcement action. We have no further comment at this time."